Browsing around online, I often find sites full of clutter, but that have an interesting piece or two somewhere on the page. It might even be an article I want to draw student attention to, but it’s drowning in a sea of irrelevance. That one sentence is all kids need to see for me to make a connection or just a passing reference to something. Maybe I simply want to show vocabulary words in action so it’s the eleventh paragraph of that NYTimes article I need to get them to. And just as often there are no bookmarks to get students to a particular spot on a Web page, so I just let it go. Today, some of the cobwebs parted and I remembered a way to handle this.
Awesome
Awesome Highlighter lets you basically create bookmarks within an existing Web page. You’re limited to highlighting two-thousand characters, but that is enough to get students where you need them to be on a given Web page. You can add sticky notes to a page, change highlight colors, and even track who accesses your highlights, when, and from where. Register and you have a list of all your highlights.
Highlight
Students working on roots comment to me that Word Information helps them when their homework asks them to find derivatives for our weekly roots. Another site could prove useful for the same thing, but their list of roots is pretty far down the page. How to get a link to that spot on the page? Done.
Er
I know that 2008 called, they want their cool site back, yeah, yeah. I’m super late to this party. Got it. For the record, though, I knew about this back in 2008 too. I just didn’t blog about it back then and forgot about it until I needed it today. That realization, and the path I took to digging this site out of my memory, could be its own post since it replicates how much of our curriculum sticks in a kid’s head, only to pop out years later when it’s actually needed and seem not worth remembering back when it’s not.
1. Elia Cooper says:
[6/20/2010 - 5:53 am]
This is a pretty neat learning and online teaching technique/tool. I teach/facilitate a 2nd yr intro JAVA course (online) and often (deeply) feel the pains my students experience as result of the constant butting of the heads – up against all of the technologies involved. The students want the knowledge quick, easy, and right now…sadly (I’ve found) that’s (often) just not possible with today’s and yesterday’s exploding tech surge(s). I’m always looking for ways to make their burdens lighter…yet maintain integrity for the profession. I’ve found this to be a practical technology in guiding their knowledge and understanding(s). Thanks for bringing it back into focus.